8.1.3.1 Associating Engines

When searching a group, nnir needs to know which search engine to
use. You can configure a given server to use a particular engine by
setting the server variable nnir-search-engine to the engine
name. For example to use the namazu engine to search the server
named home you can use

Alternatively you might want to use a particular engine for all servers
with a given backend. For example, you might want to use the imap
engine for all servers using the nnimap backend. In this case you
can customize the variable nnir-method-default-engines. This is
an alist of pairs of the form (backend . engine). By default this
variable is set to use the imap engine for all servers using the
nnimap backend, and the gmane backend for nntp
servers. (Don't worry, the gmane search engine won't actually try
to search non-gmane nntp servers.) But if you wanted to use
namazu for all your servers with an nnimap backend you
could change this to